For a Direct Sequence CDMA system an optimum type of connection is dependent upon the user's bandwidth demand behavior. For fixed rate bandwidth requirements, such as standard telephone connections, fast circuit switched connections are preferable to packet-switched connections that require routing overhead in each packet. For these types of connections the routing overhead can quickly exceed the one time channel setup overhead required of circuit switched connections. In contrast, for bursty data connections, such as those required for internet connections, packet-switched connections result in less connection overhead, since the routing overhead required to send just a few packets of data can be much smaller than the initial channel setup overhead required for circuit switched connections.
It can thus be appreciated that there is a need for a data multiplexing scheme that allows for both packet-switched and circuit switched connections to exist simultaneously in a single CDMA system, with a flexible amount of channel bandwidth allocated to each connection type.